The views expressed in this blog do not represent those of my employer, my ex-employers, or any future employers. They barely represent what I think.

Sometimes I Just Want to Cry

Or alternatively just shout really loud bad words in public.

This morning I’m not going to cry. I’m going to shout.

CAMPAIGN MAGAZINE PARTS THE SEA OF ONES AND ZEROS AND LEADS THE ADLANDERS INTO THE NEW LAND OF OPPORTUNITY. WHERE THERE’S OBVIOUSLY A NEED FOR REAL GROWN-UP-BIG-BOY TALENT TO TRANSFORM A SHITTY BACKWARD COTTAGE INDUSTRY THAT’S FULL OF PURILE PONY ADVERTISING MADE BY PIXEL-PUSHING PROLES.

HOLD ON TO YOUR HATS PEOPLE, THE ‘PROPER’ INTERNET’S COMING, JUST AS SOON AS THAT GUY WHO MADE THE AWESOME TWIX AD IN 1986 CAN FIGURE OUT HOW TO LOG-ON TO ONE OF THOSE WORLD WIDE WEBS.

I should stop reading industry rags. Actually I don’t read them. But sometimes I see the cover in reception, and that’s enough to raise the temperature of my urine.

I’m going start a new agency and we’re going to specialise in screensavers, desktop wallpapers and we’ll even convert DigiBeta to ‘internet format’. I’m going to call the company DigiAd (see what I’m doing there?). We’re then going to take out a full page ad in Campaign, with the strap line: ‘We take your campaigns digital.’ followed by our phone and fax number.

Well I wrote that article and we didn’t mean to say anything of the kind! Lots of digital agencies (glue, Dare – maybe not Poke, I don’t know) are forced to look for people from ad agencies, esp in clients services and planning because there aren’t enough digital specialists to fill all the jobs in such a growing market. And lots of ad people are interested in moving into digital, which is why we ran the piece. Simple as that…

Thanks for commenting. I know that the article wasn’t really saying that. I’m just playing up my paranoid cynical persona for entertainment purposes.

We all know there’s not enough people around and we’re having to go wherever we can to get hold of whatever ‘talent’ we can. We’ve started advertising in the local job centres for people with appropriate transferable skills – it’s cheaper than using headhunters and the talent is almost without exception digitally literate ;-)

But in order to be balanced in the whole thing you also have to realise that lots of digital people are being pulled the other way by people with bigger, deeper, more expensively lined pockets. So the whole thing is causing a massive upward salary vortex. In fact I’d hazard a guess that the reverse migration thats happening is more severe.

And I can remember lots of people being interested in ‘moving into digital’ back in the late 90s. And they did. And when the cash and cool ran out so did they.

Like the idea that you are going after job seekers rather than advertising staff! And totally agree that people are being pulled the other way – and having varied experiences once they get to ad agencies. Its another article in itself in a way, but I guess we felt that there is still a bit of fear in the ad market about the unknown in digital (and not so much the other way around) hence the reasoning for writing it the way we did. Although I would say (as I did in the piece) that plenty of the top people in digital now started off in advertising and didn’t make a run for it when the crash hit – Mark Collier, Andrew Walmsley, Rob Forshaw etc..
Anyway, love your blog, apart from that bit about not reading trade rags!

I’ve been sitting on a piece about digital planners that I wrote a while ago and keep editing again and again and again. Every time I go to post it I realise that it’s not quite right.

What I’m struggling with personally (and as part of Poke) is really understanding what the core skills we need are – given that a lot of the time we’re in multi-agency teams. So having a planner with advertising skills is quite often just replication of what another agency is bringing to the table. We should be skilling up to be able to work as part of these bigger teams (as well as on our own), which is a big challenge.

Glad you like the blog. And I do read the trade press sometimes – they’re handily positioned in our office next to the bathrooms ;-)

I really need to stop replying as its press day and we need to fill the front page! More toilet fodder for tomorrow. The digital planning thing is key – in most digital agencies, its the department that doesn’t quite stack up against the ad agencies. The thing is that a lot of young digital planners seem to think digital means “the internet”, when of course it means so much more. Whereas some more experienced planners have at least an intellectual understanding of the wider potential. But then they have no technical knowledge or meaningful experience. Its a difficult one.